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Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

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Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#191

Post by rusk »

wtallis wrote: post #188
rusk wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More advanced APIs which allow more fine-grained interaction between system and application IF you can figure out how to use them

My favorite example of this is how Windows NT has had async IO forever, while also being notorious for having slower storage performance than Linux. And when Linux finally got an async API worth using, Microsoft immediately set about cloning it for Windows. Theoretical or aesthetic advantages are no guarantee that the software in question will actually be superior in practice.

> this is how Windows NT has had async IO

Pretty much what I was thinking of. My understanding from reading some commentary in this area is the Linux implementation is yet a little botched due to how it handles waiting threads.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#192

Post by M95D »

its_magic wrote: post #166
fouc wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your work! Getting off the "upgrade" treadmill really resonates with me.

Just to be clear, I did not write these patches, but have collected many like this via scouring the net. I think I did make the ATK one though. If you'd like to be an alpha/beta/release tester of this system, hit me up via email please. I'll start with an initial closed alpha release here in a month or so, if there's interest. Now for the donation drive: I have plenty of time and a stable situation to work on this sy…

I'm sorry to tell you, but I'm not really interested in a new distribution. I appreciate the effort of what you are trying to do, but I think you are wasting time maintaining a distribution instead of maintaining patches (or a fork). If you have the know-how to patch those cancers out, then do only that and let other people do the packaging. Just make them known and available - a github repo maybe?

So, I'm not going to test your distro or switch from my Gentoo. I like Gentoo a lot, most of all because it's so very-very easy to patch any official package. Just put the patch in /etc/portage/patches/ and that's it. It gets automatically applied on the next install.

I'm using a Phenom II x6 1100 on a Gigabyte 880G. Firefox compiles in about 3-4 hours I think, not really sure. I do all Gentoo updates over night and it's usually ready in the morning. I can't say about Chromium or webkit - never used them - but 12h seems waaay too long.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#193

Post by jupake »

Modern mechanical engineers, to this day, learn the thermodynamics of steam engines. Not because they are living in the past, but because they are building foundation knowledge that will permeate everything they'll be doing in the future.

LFS should stick to academic pedagogy, instead of trying to compete in the Linux Distro space.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#194

Post by donkeybeer »

pjmlp wrote: post #187
rusk wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We really are using a 1970s era 1970 Anno Domini no less

Making it even more so of a religion. UNIX is only an OS with some good ideas, and also plenty of bad ones. No reason to stick with it ad eternum as some kind of holy scriptures.

It's "problem" unfortunately is that it happens to be the only major foss os. If there were other foss oses with good support and "better" models I'd gladly try them out. I know I personally would never switch to any non foss os after the user friendliness I have experienced. I would say that's the main reason many stick to it, including game theoretic arguments for commercial players also. Not because people like to stick to ancient models. It's not a ideal system obviously but going back to locked down crap is a no go for me and perhaps many others. BSDs are ok too but the suicidal licensing makes me less inclined.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#195

Post by pjmlp »

nine_k wrote: post #190
pjmlp wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how people worship UNIX design in Linux circles, especially when complaining about decisions where Linux is catching up with commercial UNIXes, as in the init systems replacements. UNIX design was so great that its authors did two other operating systems trying to make UNIX done right. One of the few times I agree with Rob Pike, > We really are using a 1970s era operating system well past its sell-by date. We…

A project which is intended to be a learning experience in building a Unix variant (in this case, Linux) is a kinda right place for sticking to the Unix philosophy and design, for illustrative purposes. Mr Pike has indeed constructed a better OS than Unix; too bad AT&T neither knew how to achieve viral popularity, nor why Free Software (as in GPL) is going to dominate the world. By about 1995, it was already too late…

Not as much as people in Linux community think, especially those that never used commercial UNIX offerings.

GPL is on its way out, a good example is that all Linux competitors in the embedded space, including Linux Foundation's Zephyr, none of them has adopted GPL.

GPL based software is now a minority, almost everything uses licenses that businesses rather reach for.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#196

Post by its_magic »

M95D wrote: post #192
its_magic wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, I did not write these patches, but have collected many like this via scouring the net. I think I did make the ATK one though. If you'd like to be an alpha/beta/release tester of this system, hit me up via email please. I'll start with an initial closed alpha release here in a month or so, if there's interest. Now for the donation drive: I have plenty of time and a stable situation to work on this sy…

I'm sorry to tell you, but I'm not really interested in a new distribution. I appreciate the effort of what you are trying to do, but I think you are wasting time maintaining a distribution instead of maintaining patches (or a fork). If you have the know-how to patch those cancers out, then do only that and let other people do the packaging. Just make them known and available - a github repo maybe? So, I'm not going…

Sorry dude, it's about 7 years too late to tell me to stop.

If you like Gentoo, more power to you! It's not for me.

This isn't just another run of the mill distro. It's like nothing else that's out there.

I forgot to mention that I have PaleMoon on the system also, and it compiles in a much more reasonable time. Like two hours or so, I think.

Chromium and WebKit are ginormous, and worse, they are compiled with the latest C++ standards which are slow as hell to compile. Nothing wrong with my system, it just takes forever to compile this giant bloated crap. I need more CPU cores, to blast my way through the pile of work that needs to be done.

Look of the size of the Chromium source code archives these days. It's fucking outrageous. 15 compressed gb (and growing rapidly!) of third party code vendored inside third party code vendored inside third party code, three or possibly even four levels deep! ("Yo Dawg...") Let's just have 5 complete copies of the LLVM suite in random places in there, because why not? Google has lost its marbles.

Yeah, I'm working to fix Chromium's little red wagon too. I'm on version 3 of my custom Chromium build. The binary of version 2 was slimmed down to 186 mb in size (compare to Google's version), with a 300 mb source tree (same) when I quit on it to start version 3. There was plenty more to take out. This latest version is going to be the best yet.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#197

Post by nice_byte »

I had stopped using linux at the start of the systemd takeover (it was not because of systemd).

What I don't understand is how this has happened. I didn't care either way but everybody who did seemed to really fucking hate systemd. Then how come it became the default in so many distributions, with so much opposition from the community?

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#198

Post by happymellon »

simoncion wrote: post #149
procone wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is a bit tongue in cheek, but the systemd hate is so old and tiresome at this point. I need my systems to work. Not once in my career have I experienced a showstopping issue with systemd. I cannot say the same for sysV.

> Not once in my career have I experienced a showstopping issue with systemd. Like clockwork, we'd have a SystemD edge case cause a production-down incident at a (single!) customer site once per year. Inevitably, we'd burn anywhere from a half day to a week attempting to figure out WTF, and end up in some Github Issue where Systemd Project heavyweights go "Wow. Yeah, that looks bad. Maybe we should document it. Or fi…

> and end up in some Github Issue where Systemd Project heavyweights go "Wow. Yeah, that looks bad. Maybe we should document it. Or fix it? IDK." and they'd do neither.

Do you have a reference? Not that I don't believe you, but I hated this behaviour from Poettering (although he seemed to more often blame the user) and we should totally raise up issue like this. It's a mature product that shouldn't have sharp edges any more.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#199

Post by bayindirh »

pjmlp wrote: post #187
rusk wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We really are using a 1970s era 1970 Anno Domini no less

Making it even more so of a religion. UNIX is only an OS with some good ideas, and also plenty of bad ones. No reason to stick with it ad eternum as some kind of holy scriptures.

That's true, but some of the arguably worst ideas are the ones which makes it the most approachable, hackable and understandable.

Hindsight is an interesting thing. Makes mistakes more visible while making Chesterton's Fences invisible.

We shouldn't forget these. These fences are there for the reasons. Yes, fences can be revised, but shall not be ignored.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#200

Post by imiric »

pjmlp wrote: post #177
nine_k wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Runit is 5474 SLOCs. Most source files are shorter than 100 lines. Works like a charm. Implements an init system; does not replace DNS, syslog, inetd, or anything else. Systemd, by construction, is a set of Unix-replacing daemons. An ideal embedded system setup is kernel, systemd, and the containers it runs (even without podman). This makes sense, especially given the Red Hat's line of business, but it has little rel…

I love how people worship UNIX design in Linux circles, especially when complaining about decisions where Linux is catching up with commercial UNIXes, as in the init systems replacements. UNIX design was so great that its authors did two other operating systems trying to make UNIX done right. One of the few times I agree with Rob Pike, > We really are using a 1970s era operating system well past its sell-by date. We…

This is not about mindless worship, but about the fact that the UNIX design has stood the test of time for this long, and is still a solid base compared to most other operating systems. Sure, there are more modern designs that improve on security and capability (seL4/Genode/Sculpt, Fuchsia), but none are as usable or accessible as UNIX.

So when it comes to projects that teach the fundamentals of GNU/Linux, such as LFS, overwhelming the user with a large amount of user space complexity is counterproductive to that goal. I would argue that having GNOME and KDE in BLFS is largely unnecessary and distracting as well, but systemd is core to this issue. There are many other simpler alternatives to all of this software that would be more conducive to learning. Users can continue their journey with any mainstream distro if they want to get familiar with other tooling. LFS is not the right framework for building a distribution, nor should it cover all software in the ecosystem.

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